In the manufacture and assembly of transportation vehicles, and more specifically in an application where sheet metal vehicle skeletal frames called body-in-white (BIW), dozens and dozens of individual sheet metal components and subassemblies are welded or otherwise connected together in sequential build stations positioned along an assembly line.
In modern, high-volume facilities, hundreds of industrial, multi-axis robots are used to move components and subassemblies from position to position, for example, from a part bin or rack positioned adjacent a build station to a holding fixture in the build station where it is connected to other components positioned in the same or different fixtures. Numerous additional industrial robots each have a resistance spot welding gun or rivet gun connected to a robot wrist that can be manipulated and positioned to spot weld, rivet, join, and otherwise connect the fixtured components at a particular build station.
In a typical prior build process, separate first robots were used to grasp components and subassemblies and deposit those components in a fixture or other structure in a build station for further processing. Separate second robots with weld guns or other end effectors, for example, adhesive applicators or other tooling, were used to spot weld or otherwise connect the components together before the connected subassembly can be transferred to the next build station for further processing in a similar manner described above.
Alternately, prior build processes have reduced the number of robots required by using end effectors on the robots that included both a weld gun having an actuator and a clamp or a material handling gripper that included a separate actuator. This was advantageous as it reduced the number of robots, but disadvantageous as more equipment was required to be carried and maneuvered by the robot requiring higher capacity robots to handle the load.
It would be advantageous to have a device and system that provided the benefits of reducing the number of robots through integration of a weld gun and a material handling gripper on a single robot while further reducing the amount of equipment required to operate the separate equipment and maintain the desired independent functions.